Official Statistics

MOD common law compensation claims statistics 2023/24

Published 26 June 2025

This bulletin relates to claims brought against the Ministry of Defence for compensation at common law (other than those arising out of contract disputes). These statistics do not include compensation awarded under the MOD’s no fault schemes - the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme and its predecessor the War Pension Scheme.

Summary

• Total payments by MOD for compensation claims and associated costs in Financial Year 2023/24 (not including those arising out of contract disputes) were around £180M, including claimants’ legal costs. This is exclusive of MOD legal costs and staff costs.

• The total number of new claims brought against MOD was 23,797. This represents a 245% increase on FY2022/23. The two main reasons for this are: over 7,700 claims brought by members of the local community following a fire in Kenya; and a further increase in Service noise-induced hearing loss claims.

• 2,663 Service Personnel Employer’s liability claims were settled in 2023/24. Expenditure on Service Personnel Employer’s liability claims was £135.5M.

• 141 Civilian Employer’s Liability claims were settled in 2023/24. Expenditure on Civilian Employer’s liability claims was £16.2M.

• 115 Public Liability claims were settled in 2023/24. Expenditure on Public Liability claims was £8.4M.

• 27 Clinical Negligence claims were settled in 2023/24. Expenditure on Clinical Negligence claims was £11.5M.

• 244 Third party motor claims were settled in 2023/24. Expenditure on third party motor claims was £2.6M.

• Expenditure on structured settlements/periodic payments was £5M.

• 415 claims were settled by delegated authorities in 2023/24. Expenditure for delegated authorities was £1.2M.

• The highest value claim that was settled in 2023/24 involved a service person who fell on an assault course. The total paid out on this claim (in both damages and claimants’ costs) was £6.4M.

Background Quality Report: Background Quality Report

Introduction

When compensation claims are received they are considered on the basis of whether or not the Ministry of Defence has a legal liability to pay compensation. A payment of compensation in circumstances where the Department does not consider that a court would find it liable would count as an ex gratia payment; the Department is not empowered to make such payments without Treasury authorisation with the exception of claims arising from low flying. Treasury approval is not frequently sought or given.

The amount of compensation paid is determined by common law principles which broadly take account, as appropriate, of such factors as an individual’s pain and suffering, degree of injury, property losses, past and future financial losses and level of care required. Advice is sought where necessary from the Government Legal Department, and a range of specialist Personal Injury Law firms for cases brought in England and Wales; the Crown Solicitor’s Office for cases brought in Northern Ireland; and Morton Fraser MacRoberts Solicitors for cases brought in Scotland. Counsel are also consulted on high profile or complex cases or where a point of law needs to be explored. In line with Civil procedural rules the majority of cases are settled through negotiation. However, this bulletin does not distinguish between compensation ordered by a court and compensation paid pursuant to a negotiated settlement.

Section 1: Common law compensation claims made against the MOD

The total number of new claims brought against MOD in 2023/24 was 23,797. This is a 245% increase in claims compared to 2022/23. There are two main reasons for the increase: over 7,700 Public Liability claims have been submitted from members of the local community following a fire in Kenya; and the number of Service noise-induced hearing loss claims has tripled.

Table 1: New claims, by category

	FY19/20	FY20/21	FY21/22	FY22/23	FY23/24
Total new claims brought	5,159	3,414	5,712	6,897	23,797
Employer’s Liability	3,062	1,964	3,846	5,158	14,323
Service	2,769	1,730	3,576	4,959	14,131
Noise-induced hearing loss	2,505	1,522	3,269	4,571	13,748
Non-freezing cold injury	97	63	151	228	183
Other	167	145	156	160	200
Civilian	293	234	270	199	192
Noise-induced hearing loss	48	33	28	28	29
Asbestos related	91	102	110	81	76
Other	154	99	132	90	87
Public Liability	330	340	421	335	8,084
Personal Injury	91	77	76	89	62
Motor	113	75	96	77	79
Low flying	49	86	71	34	57
Maritime	2	9	4	5	10
NI Legacy	35	49	121	79	77
Other	40	44	53	51	7,799
Clinical negligence	46	27	119	38	75
Third party Motor	989	578	823	904	880
Delegated Authorities	732	505	503	462	435
Area Claims Offices	726	454	460	418	374
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	6e	51e	43e	44e	61e

Compiled by: Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy Common Law Claims & Policy

Section 2: Settled Common law compensation claims notified

In this Section, the term settled relates to claims where damages have been awarded to the claimant and damages and associated legal costs have been paid. In total 3,605 claims were settled in 2023/24 either out of Court or by Court verdict. The financial year in which settlement is recorded is not necessarily the year in which the damages were paid. This category does not include any claims which were discontinued, struck out by the Courts, or repudiated by the Claims Unit.

Table 2: Settled claims, by category

	FY19/20	FY20/21	FY21/22	FY22/23	FY23/24
Total claims settled	2,766r	2,523r	2,482r	3,145r	3,605
Employer’s Liability	1,433r	1,126r	1,248r	2,134r	2,804
Service	1,196r	917r	1,034r	1,946r	2,663
Noise-induced hearing loss	1001r	684r	847r	1,709r	2,494
Non-freezing cold injury	70r	116r	63	95	67
Other	125	117r	124r	142r	102
Civilian	237r	209r	214r	188r	141
Noise-induced hearing loss	30	17	17	16	17
Asbestos related	112	87r	96r	89r	59
Other	95r	105	101r	83r	65
Public Liability	245r	617r	259r	135r	115
Personal Injury	53r	50r	96r	52	38
Motor	122r	57r	70	38r	38
Low flying	35	44	44r	24r	13
Maritime	2	8r	7r	1	7
Iraq Private Law	1	417	1	1	-
Afghanistan Private Law	-	13	-	-	-
NI Legacy	6	7	21	8r	8
Other	26r	21r	20r	11	11
Clinical negligence	17	20r	22r	21	27
Third party Motor	555	356	430	260	244
Delegated Authorities	516	404	523	595	415
Area Claims Offices	510	354	482	551	354
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	6	50	41	44	61

Compiled by: Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy Common Law Claims & Policy

There have been some updates to historical figures, please refer to Background Quality Report for more information.

Section 3: Cost of compensation claims notified

This table includes damages and other costs, such as claimants’ legal costs. It does not include MOD’s own legal costs which will comprise of fees to MOD instructed lawyers and disbursements such as Counsel fees and expert fees as well as some own costs for MOD’s current contractor for non-litigated cases. Expenditure may include interim payments for active claims as well as final payments for settled claims. The Personal Injury Discount Rate during this period was minus 0.25% in England and Wales, minus 0.75% in Scotland and minus 1.5% in Northern Ireland.

Table 3: Expenditure on claims, by category

	FY19/20	FY20/21	FY21/22	FY22/23	FY23/24
Total expenditure £/million	147.4	124.4	135.5	160.1	180.2
Expenditure by MOD Claims Unit and claims contractors	145.4	123.2	133.9	159.0	179.0
Employer’s Liability	88.6	94.0	107.2	127.4	151.6
Service	83.1	73.2	83.6	107.1	135.5
Civilian	5.6	20.8	23.6	20.3	16.2
Public Liability	28.4	17.9	8.7	11.8	8.4
Clinical negligence	21.5	5.0	11.4	13.3	11.5
Third party Motor	3.2	2.7	2.5	2.0	2.6
Structured settlement or periodic payments	3.7	3.7	4.1	4.5	5.0
Expenditure by Delegated Authorities	2.0	1.2	1.6	1.1	1.2
Area Claims Offices	1.9	1.1	1.5	1.1	1.1
Defence Infrastructure Organisation	~	0.1	0.2	~	0.1

Compiled by: Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy Common Law Claims & Policy

Glossary

• Civilian refers to all MOD civilian employees including members of the Ministry of Defence Guard Service (MGS) and Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) as well as cadets.

• Delegated authorities include the Area Claims Offices (ACOs) overseas and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).

• Expenditure inclusive of damages and other costs such as claimant’s legal costs. It does not include MOD legal costs which will comprise of fees to MOD instructed lawyers and disbursements such as Counsel fees and expert fees as well as some own costs for MOD’s current contractor for non-litigated cases. Expenditure may include interim payments for active claims as well as final payments for settled claims. Payments made by contractors are reimbursed by MOD.

• Settled claim relates to a claim where damages have been awarded to the claimant and damages and all associated legal costs have been paid.

Further Information

Revisions

There are no regular planned revisions of this Bulletin. Any substantial changes which are discovered to be necessary will be made to the on-line version of the Bulletin. Corrections to the published statistics will be made if errors are found, or if figures change as a result of improvements to methodology or changes to definitions. When making corrections, we will follow the Ministry of Defence Statistics, revisions and corrections policy. Corrections which would significantly alter the statistics will be corrected as soon as possible, by reissuing the publication.

Symbols

• e estimated figure based on the number of settled cases

• • zero
• ~ Less than £50,000

Contact us

Claims Point of Contact – Head of Common Law Claims and Policy

Email: SPODJEP-ClaimsGeneral@mod.gov.uk

Statistical Point of Contact: Head of Analysis (Tri-Service)

Email: Analysis-Publications@mod.gov.uk

If you require information which is not available within this or other available publications, you may wish to submit a Request for Information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to the Ministry of Defence.

If you do not wish to correspond by email, our postal address is:

Directorate of Judicial Engagement Policy – Common Law Claims and Policy Ministry of Defence, Main Building
Floor 3 Zone I
Whitehall
London
SW1A 2HB

For general MOD enquiries, please call: 020 7218 9000